It is time to put some LIFE into your Retirement Plans
Retirement is so much more than the mathematics. By the time you reach your mid fifties a crude algorithm that calculates a savings target to reach, or a spending limit to live within is not what you need. What are you looking for is a definitive answer to the question: Am I going to be, OK? – which obviously requires some appreciation of what you would like your OK to look like. In other words what do you want to do, when do you want to do it and how big do you plan to do it. Now, at long last you have an ability to start to design your retirement in an environment where you can confidently explore the life events you are contemplating.
You are not a cartographer trying to draft a set-it and forget it map – you are starting a 20-to-30-year journey through unknown terrain where frequent course adjustments will be required. What you need is a navigation system not a quick and dirty mathematical algorithm that sets an annual spending limitation.
Yes, there are a multitude of important money choices that need to be made, however the clues to determining the right money choices are often determined by the peaks and valleys of future cash flow requirements. If you want to determine the most tax efficient withdrawal strategy, when to start your CPP, your OAS or convert your RRSPs to RRIFs, how to optimize the power of income splitting in retirement it is best to start by first charting your retirement life plan.
Our choices determine our destiny
Good choices lead to good outcomes, bad choices can lead to big mistakes. The key is knowing how to distinguish between the two, before you commit to the choice. At Retirement Navigator we believe you should approach retirement from the perspective of a designer as opposed to a mathematician. As a designer you build a model of the choices you what you hope to build and then through the process of prototyping your many choices, you thoroughly test these choices before you commit to them. The process of design thinking is one that allows for certainties to mix with guesses and outcomes to be modeled and assessed. Design thinking is the philosophy that sits at the heart of Retirement Navigator and our most specifically our Retirement Designer App. Enter what you know, make guesses about the future, assess the outcomes.